Edward A. Fischer was a 1937 graduate of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. He went on to a successful career in writing and journalism, eventually returning to his alma mater as a professor.
Fischer taught courses in film, writing, and design there for about 30 years. In 1976, Professor Fischer published Light in the Far East, a profile of the Columban mission in Korea that focused on Columban Archbishop Harold W. Henry.
Two Columban benefactors, one of whom had a daughter who was a student of Fischer’s, commissioned the professor to write this book.
Fischer maintained an abiding interest in the history of East Asia, having served there as a journalist and military historian. He was also interested in the history of Catholicism in the United States.
When the Columban Fathers, impressed by his work on Light in the Far East, asked Professor Fischer to write more books on Columban history, he was happy to oblige.
In 1981, Professor Fischer released Fiji Revisited, a memoir of the Columban mission in Fiji, with a focus on Columban Father Martin A. Dobey’s work there.
Throughout the years, Fischer would publish seven books on the history of the Columban Fathers and Sisters, and highlighting their missions in Burma, China, Korea, Fiji, Japan and elsewhere.
Fischer became a great friend to the Columbans, working pro bono while researching and writing his books on the Society. His books remain outstanding resources for the Columban archives and history, and the Notre Dame archives maintain a collection of his personal papers.
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The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.